Punch (32.1857)

May 30, 1857.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

211

THE SOCIAL TREAD-MILL.—No. 5.

E course, it has occurred to
you, Mr. Punch, what a bene-
factor of his species that man
would be who should leave a
large fortune to found and
endow a college for Cooks.
When I consider the science
and art that must combine in
a good cook, and the crass
ignorance and presumption of
most persons assuming the
title, I am astonished that
some benevolent individual
has not thought of establish-
ing a normal school of culi-
nary instruction—where the
whole round of the science
might be taught, from boiling
a potato up to a dinner of
three courses.

" There might be periodical
examinations by skilled per-
sons for each department of
study.—A. Board of Irish
examiners for potato-boiling,
one of London Aldermen for
turtle, and so forth. There
might be cook-lists, like Uni-
versity class-lists—with ordi-
nary degrees, and honours
and medals. The Cooks'
College should not be a place
for educating cooks with a
view to domestic service, but
a normal institution, from
which highly qualified culi-
nary teachers might be
planted all over the country—each the head of a local culinary school It should be com-
pulsory on every girl of a certain age, to have attended for a certain time at such a school.
I do not know that I should not make the production of a certificate of such attendance a
legal condition preliminary to marriage, and impose a heavy penalty on the clergyman
who united any young woman in holy matrimony without such a certificate.

" It stands to reason that the instruction in these National Cooking Schools, should differ
for different classes. There should be the poor-man's wife course—the respectable trades-
man's wife, or middle-class course—the soup-and-fish-every-day, or thousand-a-year course—
and so upwards. A young woman on entering would be entered for the course appropriate
to her station in life. So there would be a special curriculum for those who aimed at
qualifying themselves for cook's places. But all women ought to have a certain minimum
of culinary knowledge, and therefore I would insist on the certificate in all cases. _

" I really think the man who first endows such a Cooks' College, and the minister who
first introduces such a compulsory system of national culinary education, will each deserve
a statue—I beg pardon—will each deserve—not to have a statue, but—to be commemorated
in whatever form we may succeed in devising that is not both ugly and ridiculous.

" But after all, bad cookery is the worst that cooks_ have to answer for. There is
undoubtedly a lamentable amount of bad cookery—in other words, of discomfort,
indigestion, and waste—in this country. But the remedy for this lies_ in a great degree
beyond our own power. Indeed, until the far-sighted patriot arises to found my
culinary college, I do not see my way to any very general elevation of the standard of our
cooks.

" Bad dinners, however, depend on something very different from bad cookery. Indeed,
there may be very bad dinners with very good cookery, and even very good dinners occa-
sionally with very bad cookery. I call every dinner a bad one where the people have been
invited for any other principal reason than because their host likes them, and is liked by
them; where the mistress of the house is fidgety, or the master of the house uncomfort-
able ; where the guests are too many for the table, or the servants not enough for the
guests; where in an establishment evidently mounted on the leg-of-mutton-scale, I am
treated to two courses and champagne; where a variety of wines are handed round, but
the glasses only half-filled; where a pine-apple is put on the table at dessert and carried
away uncut; where the plate comes from the pawnbroker's, the entrees from the pastrycook's,
or the waiters from the greengrocer's round the corner; where a thousand a-year is made to
do duty for five, or where five thousand narrows itself to the proportions_ of one. In short,
every dinner is a bad one which is out of keeping witli the house in which it is eaten; and
1 grieve to say, that the proportion of such dinners to the total number consumed in London
is very great indeed.

" Condemned though I be to the Social Tread-mill, I am of a cheerful disposition, and gay
in the intervals of my punishment. Yet into how many drawing-rooms do I enter, in
fulfilment of solemn dinner obligations, where chilly constraint and cowardly ceremonial lay
leaden weights upon me and every soul present! Why, when I dine with the Kotoos, do I
pull off my naturalness and cheerfulness with my paletot, and draw on a certain starched
and constrained self with my white gloves ? Why is the quarter of an hour before dinner
in that house so much longer than any other hour in the day elsewhere ? Why do we
all fall desperately to talking of the weather ? Why, but that we are one and all conscious
of some unreality or inconvenience, or humbug, or incongruity in our being thus assembled.

There is Bladebone, the barrister, with a
growing family and a decreasing practice,
thinking what a nuisance it is to have to pay for
the fly which brought himself and Mrs. B. to the
hospitable door. There is Mrs. B. scanning
Mns. Elaunter's new glace silk, and wondering
whether the bill is settled at Howell and
James's. Elaunter—who was .in the Guards,
but sold out on his marriag-::, and is now on the
Turf, and in difficulties—nas his head full of
judgments, cognovits, and odds, and bills
coming due, and I O TPs. ' Ah, you're a happy
fellow,' he sighs, to Mr. Pennyboy, the City
magnate, as that distinguished capitalist give's
him the particulars of a remarkable rise in the
shares of the sixth new company he has become
a director of this year. Pennyboy chuckles
huskily, and tries to look as if he agreed with
Elaunter. But he knows that he is sailing on
the fathomless sea of speculation, buoyed up by
bubbles, and that the bursting of any one of the
six may sink him. Here is a young author ; of
course it must be very delightful to him to meet
tee quarterly reviewer who cut up his last book
so humorously. And here are two Mammas
with a daughter a-piece, and only one eligible
young man of the partj—Pleasant situation for
all five!

" Now every one of this party has been
invited, not because the Koioos take particular
pleasure in the company of any of their guests,
or imagine that any of their guests feel particular
pleasure in coming; but because they have been
invited by the Bladebones, the Elaunters,
and the Pennyboys, and think it a duty to invite
them in return. The Reviewer and the Author
are the show-pieces—the stalking-horses—the
ornaments of the entertainment, and the youni
ladies, with the Mammas, are the baits providaa
for the Reviewer and the Author. The eligible
young man is asked because he is so very eligible
in every way—and does credit to every house
where he condescends to dine. In short, here
are all manner of motives for bringing the party
together, but the one motive that can make the
party pleasant—the desire of giving and receiv-
ing pleasure.

" Is any one here really the happier for seeing:
another ? Is there one who would not, if he had
his or her own will, rather be at home than in
the Kotoos' drawing-room—always excepting
Guttleton, the Reviewer, who is a bachelor,
and ha3 no home, and would (but for the Kotoos'
invitation) have had to pay for his dinner at the
Athenaeum—a thing he hates. But poor Blade-
bone would infinitely have preferred the homely
hash which Mrs. B. would have treated him to
—three days' table-cloth, small beer and all—to
the Kotoos' three courses; and no wonder,
seeing that the privilege of stretching his thin
and threadbare legs under their mahogany stands
him—including gloves, fly, and a new^collar for
Mrs. B.,—at least a sovereign. - Elaunter
would have preferred a snug little dinner at his
Club; leaving Mrs. E. to her own arrangements
at home—for similar reasons to Bladebone's.
Pennyboy has already vented his feelings, with
regard to the Kotoos' invitation, in the shower
of imprecations with which he accompanied his
toilet. He has 'other things to think of than

those ■- people's - dinners,' &c. &c.

The Mammas wish each other at Jericho-and
the eligible young man wishes himself in some
place, if there be any place, where young women
are not flung at the heads of eligible young
men.

" Of course, under these circumstances, it is
to be expected that the Kotoos' party should be
an uncommonly lively, cheerful, unconstrained,
and open-hearted gathering ?

" So much for the guests.

"But the dinner? —Let us see how the
Kotoos redeem the mal-arrangement round their
mahogany, by the style of entertainment they
put upon it."